I Like The Console War

the console Wars a ceaseless battle with no end in sight you got the Sony ponies on one side and the Xbox on the other just going at it day after day real nasty stuff you know what this is I don't need to explain the console Wars but I'm gonna take a bold stance today I'm gonna come at you with what I imagine will be a rather unpopular opinion I kind of like the console war that would have been a much bigger reveal if I didn't have to spoil it in the title now yeah I have my issues with this stuff tribalism is silly especially when it comes to video game boxes and we are talking about grown men going around pledging their loyalty to multi-billion or trillion dollar conglomerates there's definitely some real late stage capitalism Vibes here I'll give you that but for the most part it's entertaining sure there's people that take this stuff too far people who don't really know where to draw the line of socially acceptable behavior resorting to personal attacks and harassment over these things is not cool like if you're going around doxing people because they said something that you didn't like about your favorite console I don't know if I can really help you bud that that seems like it might require professional help but we only really ever hear about the bad of the console Wars the people going around doing reprehensible War crime in the name of Jim Ryan or Phil Spencer I have is our outliers sing it out over whether PlayStation is better than Xbox so today I just want to offer a different take on this situation because it's I don't know why not the console war has probably always existed ever since people had the option to buy two different consoles people naturally gravitate towards this tribalism and if there's something to argue about people will find ways to argue about it and in most cases I think it's pretty stupid especially when it comes to consumer electronics like if you get a genuine ego boost a sense of superiority because of what phone brand you buy you're either uninformed about the technology you're a narcissist or you have the lowest possible standard for what you consider a personal accomplishment but when it comes to game console arguments I don't know I see things a bit differently the console war really started to heat up in the early 90s it's like I wanted to take a piece of the gaming console market for itself and Nintendo kinda had a bit of a monopoly by this point so Sega launched an incredible marketing campaign where they basically convinced people that Nintendo consoles were for little stupid kids and Sega consoles were for real manly men now this strategy made some of the older teens and maybe even young adults start to look at these game console things differently but it really had an effect on the children once kids get to a certain age they don't want to watch the TV shows or play the games that they think are made for the stupid babies they want to play the games that they think are made for the older kids and since they believe that Sega was the more mature platform out of the tune a lot of kids naturally gravitated towards this the console war really just started out on the playgrounds with kids screaming that Sonic is better than Mario and blast processing but after this point the console war just kept going on to the internet nowadays we got the switch the PS5 the Xbox series X and the streaming box I think the reason the console war is different than most brand Wars or phone debates is because the console war isn't really a No Holds Barred sort of battle there's actually kind of rules for proper etiquette and engagement sales numbers for these boxes are often one of the major talking points which box sold more than the other box how many Spider-Man copies sold compared to Halo 2 but it all starts to fall apart pretty quickly the longer you think about it the PS4 outsold the Xbox One by a huge margin but the switch outsold the PS4 and mobile gaming completely dominates consoles but if you bring this up people will say sure but those aren't really real games or this isn't the same thing but I mean it kinda is like if this is the metric for Success something else has won and also we have game console power in performance this is one of the other most popular topics do games run better on the series X or the PS5 maybe the PS5 has a few more Blades of grass or the Xbox gets an extra frame every few seconds but this has its own problems as well the top of the line gaming PCs will destroy the consoles by any metric 8K resolution 240fps path tracing even games designed for the PS5 and series X will often look better on the PC so bringing it up at all is kind of cheating you don't want to do this in the console war arguments it's like two guys arguing about whether a Camaro or Mustang is better and a dude rolls up in a Bugatti and says uh I win I'm faster like sure yeah you are but it kind of ruins the fun of the argument but these rules are important and it's why I consider the console war to be kind of different from most brand tribalism things everybody has a phone for the most part but for 99.8 percent of the global population they don't care about Xbox versus PlayStation they don't own an Xbox or a PlayStation to them this whole fight is like watching refrigerator enthusiasts argue about whether GE is better than LG most people could not care less I've seen a lot of console war Fanboys compare the argument to sort of like sports sports fans argue with other sports fans it's it's kind of the fun of the of being a sports fan but I see some people disagree because cheering on a sports team is a lot different than cheering on a multinational business right but is it sports teams will label themselves as organizations but let's be honest these are businesses their goal at the end of the day is to make money and they make money by winning games and getting more fans to sell more tickets and selling merchandise I'm not ripping on Sports not making fun of this guy I'm just saying these two things they aren't that diff different for the most part sports are a little bit different than the console work because you know sports teams can actually win games they compete directly and somebody actually comes out on top nobody really wins a console war because there's no way to score points and the fans decide what counts as a victory or a loss you can't even really just say whoever sells the most consoles wins because there's a fair argument to be made that when a company outsells the competition that's actually a bad thing for consumers it just means that the company doesn't have to try as hard to bring new people in because people are already buying the box and people can argue about which exclusives are better but yeah you're never going to be able to get a definitive answer on that for somebody out there Xbox getting Age of Empires 2 remastered is way more exciting than the last of us the other big difference between sports fans and the console Warriors is something that I like to call the rates of assumed participation if you go into a bar and you say wow OSU was really looking bad this year you're basically telling everybody I'm willing to have an argument right now like it wouldn't be unexpected or abnormal for somebody to respond with OSU is great what are you talking about you Michigan fans are coping so hard after last year if you're talking about sports you're saying okay fight me and everybody involved understands that because sports are more interesting if you have a team to cheer for nobody's gonna come up to you and say hey settle down all teams are equal all teams are great let's just enjoy football but in gaming there is no guarantee to soon participation a lot of people play video games and they don't care at all about the console war a lot of people play PCS they don't even care about consoles they just want to play games and they want to talk about the games they like if somebody says Hey PlayStation network is down what's going on that's not an invitation for an argument that's just a statement it's somebody saying hey I'm having an issue here what's happening so if somebody were to respond to this statement with well Xbox Live never goes down clown Emoji it just comes off as kinda awkward and weird and a bit socially inept the Contour is not exactly like sports because not everybody is willing to have this argument people can enjoy video games without caring about the debate now there is one element of the Contour war that I kind of feel dirty even mentioning but I think it's important the money aspect yeah we're talking console war profiteering a lot of gaming journalists actually really despise the console war and I get why anybody that tries to cover the news in an objective manner knows that Fanboys can be a bit much at times it's hard enough to try and keep your own opinions out of a story when reporting it and generally it's a thankless job so when you get accused of being biased just because you're reporting a story of Sony or Microsoft doing something bad it could get a bit disheartening but at the same time the console war kind of keeps this whole gaming journalism thing to flow there's only so many people out there that play video games on consoles maybe like 200 million at most out of that Bunch most of the people just played Call of Duty GTA or EA Sports It's really just a small percentage of people that follow what's happening in video game news and what announcements are being made and out of that group it's an even smaller percentage of people that care about the business and financial aspects of these companies that make video game consoles in most Industries this would be incredibly Niche it would mostly just appeal to people who work within the industry Executives businessmen and people who work for these companies for the most part this kind of stuff would be presented in a very sterile professional manner by a man who went to college he works at a hedge fund and he's trying to inform investors on which companies to buy stock from what I'm saying is normally it wouldn't be presented by an animated cat sitting in a swimming pool uh meow I think the reason this entire gaming industry analysis thing can exist and people care about it is in large part due to that console war now not everybody is a fanboy but I think people have preferences and that makes these sort of business things more interesting because you have a team to cheer for so you're interested what they're doing and in the console war battles are fought with information these reports and studies and polls and quotes that's all ammo for the next Skirmish now there is another aspect of Fanboys that I think a lot of people will take issue with and it's the fact that they defend anti-consumer practices if Sony or Microsoft announced tomorrow that it's going to cost 200 a year to play games online Fanboys for these companies would jump to their defense immediately they have actively hurt the rest of the community by telling these corporations that it's okay to do these awful things but I don't think that really matters see if Sony did announce tomorrow that it's gonna cost two hundred dollars a year to play games online yes the PlayStation Fanboys would probably defend that decision but the Xbox Fanboys would absolutely tear into Sony for this and if Microsoft did it it'd be the same thing the Xbox Fanboys don't hold Xbox accountable but PlayStation Fanboys do and those Sony ponies might not hold PlayStation accountable but those Xbox will when these big corporations are looking at the online discourse surrounding their products I don't think they're distinguishing between PlayStation and Xbox Fanboys I I don't know maybe they are but I imagine it's more likely they just see a guy on Twitter see that he's complaining about something and think oh that's a potential customer and they have an issue with these business practices and there's a lot of them I'm sure to some degree the console war has contributed to some of these companies reversing terrible policies which again that's a good thing right the last thing I want to talk about is why I think people do this why they argue about these video game consoles the worst thing you can say in a console or fight is this is pointless just play the video games on the video game box you want and click this console war nonsense if you care so much about this stuff just go by the other console this is a petty debate and there are so many bigger issues in the world real problems that matter and you sit here choosing to waste your time arguing about this in questioning the entire legitimacy of the debate but it's kind of true there are more important things to discuss arguably more pressing matters than whether Playstation or Xbox is better but that's kind of the point of the console war it's escapism or at least it should be it's just an outlet to really discuss this kind of news that nobody cares about most people who play video games don't care about this stuff they could not care less if a third party exclusive from Sony underperformed or whether Microsoft's Gamescom showcase was slightly underwhelming finding people to talk about this kind of stuff with is difficult enough in the console word just kind of gives people an outlet for that it's more like debating Kirk versus Picard almost nobody cares about this stuff but for those who do it's a fun exercise it gives a sense of community sure it can get out of hand people can take it too far but I think for most people it's just for fun all of these discussions are pointless but people like it people enjoy the debate all the while knowing that neither side will ever win or lose I'm not recommending that everyone just goes out there and starts ripping on people for playing a different console but I don't think it's fair to say that the console war is the worst thing to happen in gaming and yeah if it makes people care about the things that I personally care about stuff about the gaming industry and the history of these Brands I'm not gonna complain [Music] thank you [Music]

Channel: Whimsu

Views: 82,887

Keywords: Xbox, xbox series x, xbox series s, xbox one, xbox 360, playstation, playstation 2, ps2, ps3, ps4, playstation 5, ps5, nintendo, Nintendo Switch, Mario, sega, sonic, halo, the last of us, consoles, fanboys, console fanboys, internet, internet arguments, gaming, video games, gaming industry, gaming journalism, microsoft, sony

Id: 5ACY-oYHPfw

Length: 15min 10sec (910 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 03 2023